The City of Brotherly Love did not escape the war that divided a nation. Soldiers from both sides of the Civil War are buried in historical Philadelphia cemeteries and remembered with monuments in Pennsylvania’s largest city. Even Independence Hall, most well known for the signing of the Declaration of Independence during the American Revolution, would become would another sort of landmark for the Civil War. It’s where President Abraham Lincoln made a speech to raise funds for war hospitals, and where he would temporarily lie in state following his assassination. After the war was over, Independence Hall’s iconic Liberty Bell was sent from city to city to remind Americans what had first united them.
Marking one entrance to Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park, the Civil War Soldiers and Sailors Memorial includes two separate structures, one with sculptures of sailors and the other with soldiers. At another entrance to the park stands the Smith Memorial Arch, comprising two arches adorned with sculptures and busts of Pennsylvania’s Civil War heroes. Statues of two Union generals, Major General George Gordon Meade and Major General John F. Reynolds, stand atop columns beside the arches. At Aviator Park, the All Wars Memorial to Colored Soldiers and Sailors has sculptures commemorating the Civil War’s African-American troops.
Outside City Hall, see another statue of Union General John F. Reynolds, astride his horse. He died at the Battle of Gettysburg. A statue of Union General George McClellan astride a horse also stands outside City Hall. At Fairmount Park, see a statue of Union General Ulysses S. Grant astride his horse and a statue of Union General Meade, who defeated Confederate General Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg. A statue of Abraham Lincoln signing the Emancipation Proclamation was erected in 1871. Outside the Union League of Philadelphia, a city club formed to support the Union cause, are two statues depicting unnamed Union soldiers. A statue of Union General Galusha Pennypacker stands next to Benjamin Franklin Parkway.
Hundreds of Civil War soldiers and veterans are buried at Laurel Hill, a national historic landmark that offers regularly scheduled tours of the cemetery built in 1836. Meade is buried there, and so is Confederate General John C. Pemberton, who surrendered to Grant at Vicksburg. At Philadelphia National Cemetery, where the Union’s Pennypacker is buried, the Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Monument was built to remember Confederate soldiers buried there.
The Civil War Museum of Philadelphia, chartered in 1888, houses 3,000 Civil War artifacts, including weapons, uniforms, battle flags, military band instruments and battlefield surgical instruments. An elaborately crafted sword given to Grant after his capture of Vicksburg is part of the collection. The Grand Army of the Republic Museum and Library, located in the Ruan House, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, has a smaller collection of Civil War artifacts. Among its holdings are battlefield tree stumps embedded with cannonballs. Fort Mifflin, the site of battles against the British during the American Revolution, became a lesser landmark during the Civil War when it was converted into a prison to hold Union, Confederate and civilian wrongdoers.
